Part 63 (1/2)

About the middle of the last century (1855) an effort was made to break up this corrupt and corrupting system, but the real work was not accomplished until 1870. In that year England threw open the majority of the positions in the civil service to compet.i.tive examination.

Henceforth the poorest day laborer, whether man or woman, might, if competent, ask for any one of many places which formerly some influential man or political ”boss” reserved as gifts for those who obeyed his commands.

The next year (1871) the purchase of commissions in the army was abolished.[1] This established the merit system in the ranks, and now military honors and military offices are open to all who can earn them.

[1] Up to 1871 an officer retiring from the army could sell his commission to any officer next below him in rank who had the money to buy the position; whereas under the present system the vacancy would necessarily fall to senior officers in the line of promotion. In the year following this salutary change the entire British army was reorganized.

The Registration Act of 1843 required every voter to have his name and residence recorded on a public list. This did away with election frauds to a large extent. It was supplemented in 1872 by the introduction of the ”secret ballot” (S591). This put an end to the intimidation of voters and to the free fights and riots which had so frequently made the polls a political pandemonium. The Bribery Act of 1883 was another important measure which did much toward stopping the wholesale purchase of votes by wealthy candidates or by powerful corporations.

610. Reforms in Law Procedures.

During Queen Victoria's reign great changes for the better were effected in simplifying the laws and the administration of justice.

When she came to the throne the Parliamentary Statutes at Large filled fifty-five huge folio volumes, and the Common Law, as contained in judicial decisions from the time of Edward II (1307), filled about twelve hundred more. The work of examining, digesting, and consolidating this enormous ma.s.s of legislative and legal lore was taken in hand (1863) and has been slowly progressing ever since.

The Judicature Acts (1873, 1877) united the chief courts in a single High Court of Justice. This reform did away with much confusion and expense. But the most striking changes for the better were those made in the Court of Chancery (S147) and the criminal courts.

In 1825 the property belonging to suitors in the former court amounted to nearly forty millions of pounds.[1] The simplest case might require a dozen years for its settlement, while difficult ones consumed a lifetime, or more, and were handed down from father to son,--a legacy of baffled hopes, of increasing expense, of mental suffering worse than that of hereditary disease.

[1] See Walpole's ”History of England,” Vol. III.

Much has been done to remedy these evils, which d.i.c.kens set forth with such power in his novel of ”Bleak House.” At one time the prospect of reform seemed so utterly hopeless that it was customary for a prize fighter, when he had got his opponent's neck twisted under his arm, and held him absolutely helpless, to declare that he had his head ”in chancery”!

611. Reforms in Criminal Courts and in the Treatment of the Insane.

In criminal courts an equal reform was effected, and men accused of burglary and murder are now allowed to have counsel to defend them, and the right of appeal is secured; whereas, up to the era of Victoria, they were obliged to plead their own cases as best they might against skilled public prosecutors, who used every resource known to the law to convict them.

Great changes for the better have also taken place in the treatment of the insane. Until near the close of the eighteenth century this unfortunate cla.s.s was quite generally regarded as possessed by demons, and dealt with accordingly. William Tuke, a member of the Society of Friends, inaugurated a better system (1792); but the old method continued for many years longer. In fact, we have the highest authority for saying that down to a pretty late period in the nineteenth century the inmates of many asylums were worse off than the most desperate criminals.

They were shut up in dark, and often filthy, cells, where ”they were chained to the wall, flogged, starved, and not infrequently killed.”[2] Since then, mechanical restraints have, as a rule, been abolished, and the patients are generally treated with the care and kindness which their condition demands.

[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th and 11th editions) under ”Insanity.”

612. Progress in the Education of the Ma.s.ses.

We have seen that since 1837 the advance in popular education equaled that made in the extension of suffrage and in civil service reform.

When Victoria began her reign a very large proportion of the children of the poor were growing up in a stat bordering on barbarism. Many of them knew little more of books or schools than the young Hottentots in Africa.

The marriage register shows that as late as 1840 forty per cent of the Queen's adult subjects could not write their names in the book; by the close of her reign (1901) the number who had to ”make their mark” in that interesting volume was only about one in ten. This proves, as Lord Brougham said, that ”the schoolmaster” has been ”abroad” in the land.

The national system of education began, as we have already seen, in 1870 (S602). Later, the a.s.sisted Education Act (1891) made provision for those who had not means to pay even a few pence a week for instruction. That law practically put the key of knowledge within reach of every child in England.

613. Religious Toleration in the Universities; Payment of Church Rates abolished.

The universities felt the new impulse. The abolition of religious tests for degrees at Oxford and Cambridge (1871) threw open the doors of those venerable seats of learning to students of every faith.

Since then colleges for women have been established at Oxford and in the vicinity of Cambridge, and the ”university-extension”

examinations, with ”college settlements” in London and other large cities, have long been doing excellent work.

The religious toleration granted in the universities was in accord with the general movement of the age. It wil be remembered that the Catholics were readmitted to sit in Parliament (S573) late in the reign of George IV (1829), and that under Victoria the Jews were admitted (1858) to the same right (S599). Finally Mr. Bradlaugh got his Oaths Bill pa.s.sed (1888), and so opened PArliament to persons not only of all religious beliefs but of none.

In the meantime the compulsory payment of rates for the support of the Church of England had been abolished (1868) (S601); and the next year (1869) was made memorable by the just and generous act by which Mr. Gladstone disestablished the Irish branch of the English Church (S601).